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Romantic 

Historic 

Picture 

Story 

of 

"THE CITY 


Illustrations by 
WILL WILKE 

Descriptions by 
EDW. F. O'DAY 


Reprinted 

From 















\ 










\ 
















OI d 

San Francisco 


A series of twenty-six 
articles on the famous 
and historic spots of 
OLD San Francisco 
reprinted from 
The San Francisco News 


This booklet is presented FREE to readers who saved all of 
the clippings of the feature as it appeared in The News. 


Additional copies of the booklet may 
be secured from The News at 15c each. 








“The deep embrasures, where the brazen cannon 
are.” 


—BRET HARTE. 


I T IS Fort Point to us, but Anza christened 
it (1776) Punta del Cantil Blanco, the 
point of the steep white rock. It was a bold 
promontory, sheer to the water a hundred or 
more feet below. Eighteen years later the 
first Spanish fort—Castillo de San Joaquin 
—was built, a big adobe horseshoe pierced 
with embrasures for brazen nine-pounders 
sent from San Bias, Lower California. Later 
on brick superseded adobe. 

On the first of July, ’46, Fremont stole 
across from Sausalito and spiked the guns. 
“A bold deed,” says one authority, while 
others insist that there was not an enemy 
in sight! 

In 1854 the “cantil bianco” was leveled 
to the water’s edge, and the leisurely build¬ 
ing of Fort Winfield Scott began. When 


Dana paid us his second visit in 1859, not 
before the mast, he took “a California horse 
of the old style—the run, the loping gait,” 
and visited the Fort. “One of our engineers,” 
he noted, “is Custis Lee, who has just left 
West Point at the head of his class, a son 
of Col. Robert E. Lee, who distinguished him¬ 
self in the Mexican War.” George Washing¬ 
ton Custis Lee little dreamed that he was 
soon to ride with his father and his cousin, 
Fitzhugh, through the conflict of the States. 
Of the Fort, Dana said, “It is very expensive 
and of the latest style.” Sacramento may 
boast that her yards contributed more than 
a million bricks to its structure. It took the 
threat of Civil War to bring it to comple¬ 
tion. 

Today the poppy and the iris grow on the 
declivity above the outmoded bastion and 
the silent guns. Tomorrow (a year is as a 
day in San Francisco history) the little toy 
defense will be all but lost in the shadow of 
the Golden Gate bridge. 







































































"I was us that plowed the thoroughfares and 
built the wharves by day; 

'Twas us that formed the Vigilants to drive 
the wolves away. 

—WALLACE IRWIN. 

IN beautiful old Laurel Hill Cemetery there 
I is a fine monument with this inscription: 
“In the year 1847 at Clark’s Point on Yerba 
Buena Cove where Broadway crosses Bat¬ 
tery the piles for the first wharf on San 
Francisco Bay were driven by William 
Squire Clark.” 

For this beginning of our waterfront 
Clark fashioned a pile-driver out of 1200 
pounds of pig iron that he obtained from 
a whaler lying at Sausalito. A windlass com¬ 
pleted his equipment. 

Yerba Buena Cove, curving its crescent 
sands from Punta del Rincon to Punta del 
Embarcadero (afterwards Clark’s Point) was 
made a port of entry for California by Gov. 
Figueroa in 1835, so our harbor may cele¬ 
brate its centenary very soon. Two years 
later William A. Richardson became our first 
harbor master. 

It remained, however, for the enterpris¬ 
ing Clark and his pig iron to demonstrate 
the value of a wharf. The first ships had 
discharged cargo by lighterage, but there 
was deep water at Clark’s Point, and one 
fine day in October of ’48 the brig Belfast 
from New York docked there and began 
putting her merchandise ashore. Immedi¬ 
ately the price of goods went down and the 


price of real estate went up! One lot at 
Montgomery and Washington sts. soared 
overnight from $5000 to $10,000. Foremost 
among those that profited was William 
Squire Clark. 

Wharf building became our major indus¬ 
try. Central or Long Wharf was soon the 
glory of our waterfront, a combination of 
emporium and promenade. It ran down from 
Leidesdorff along the present line of Com¬ 
mercial st. The business of the port moved 
southward along the Cove, leaving Clark’s 
Point and its purlieus to evil men—no po¬ 
liceman liked to venture there single- 
handed. But the Vigilantes of ’51 changed 
a good deal of that. 

Today it is not easy to picture the square- 
rigged Belfast sailing up to Broadway and 
Battery. It is still more difficult to visualize 
the old Cove with wharf after wooden wharf 
thrust out across the shoal to deep water. 

Twenty years after, Barry and Patten 
(the only saloonkeepers who ever became 
historians) suggested that their readers 
stand at Montgomery and Sacramento, 
looking east, and try to think where Dali & 
Austin’s store was “in the spring of ’50.” 
Their comment helps us to hear the water 
lapping at the heart of our present commer¬ 
cial district: “It used to seem a long way 
across the water to their store .. . and when 
one had walked the length of Howison’s 
pier to Hoff’s store at the corner of Battery 
st., he seemed well on the way to Contra 
Costa.” 

























































































































Scarred with the jagged wounds from ruth¬ 
less hands, 

Despoiled, dishonored of my fair array — 

The gold and emerald vesture of the day 

When first I signaled to these virgin strands 

The argosies and fleets of alien lands. 

—INA COOLBRITH. 

T was Loma Alta when the little boats from 
“the Contra Costa” used to glide in under 
its shoulder and land the dons for business at 
the Custom House or pleasure at the Presidio. 

It became Windmill Hill in the late 40s 
when a windmill was erected by our first 
coffee grinder. 

Signal Hill was its popular designation 
after Sweeney and Baugh rigged their sema¬ 
phore whose “long, black arms stretched out 
to tell thousands of anxious husbands, 
fathers and lovers that the steamer, bearing 
news of hope and happiness, or of the death 
of loved ones, was in sight.” 

Our merchants, bankers and newspapers 
supported this service with liberality, so 
Sweeney and Baugh erected another signal 
station on Point Lobos to command a further 
stretch of ocean. 

In ’53 the newspapers from the east 
brought technical information of a marvel, 
the “magneto-electric telegraph.” In Sep¬ 
tember of that year Sweeney and Baugh 
installed one between their two stations. It 


was the first telegraph on the Pacific coast, 
and it fixed forever the name of Telegraph 
Hill. 

This pet of ours remained for some time 
a hill of “gold and emerald vesture,” and of 
symmetry. Later it was “scarred with 
jagged wounds” on its eastern and northern 
slopes, a transformation that should have 
inspired another “Gray’s Elegy.” 

It had bad neighbors in the “ducks” of 
Sydney Town, but its own tenants were 
eminently respectable. There the boy, 
Charles Warren Stoddard, looked out upon 
his beloved city, and in a cottage up the 
wooden stairs from Montgomery st. young 
Edwin Booth took lessons in the art of act¬ 
ing from his father, Junius Brutus. 

Its Castle, beloved of Sunday merrymak¬ 
ers, came and went. Its glory waxed and 
waned, and grew again when civic pride 
was aroused to save its remaining beauty. 
Painters and etchers have always fancied 
it. Nowadays fishermen and hobohemians 
mingle in its revels of red paint and chop- 
pino. The poets are still expressing its 
variety of charms, but none has surpassed 
Wallace Irwin’s rollicking tribute. 

Who ever loved it more than Lily Hitch¬ 
cock Coit? Right now Arthur Brown is busy 
on Telegraph Hill enriching our skyline with 
her Memorial Tower. 
























































































Red-handed murder rioted; and there 
The people gathered gold, nor cared to loose 
The assassin s fingers from the victim's throat. 
But said, each in his vile pursuit engrossed: 

“Am I my brother's peeper? Let the law 
Look to the matter." But the law did not. 

—AMBROSE BIERCE. 

O N the south side of Sacramento st. below 
Front there is a neat brick building whose 
last occupant, appropriately enough, was a 
bag company, for this building stands on 
the site of Fort Gunnybags. A bronze tablet 
identifies the spot. It bears the “watchful 
eye” that was the symbol of the Vigilantes 
of ’56 and that was afterwards adopted by 
the Pinkertons. 

Fort Gunnybags was “a citadel that de¬ 
fied both civil and military authorities,” as 
both Gov. Neely Johnson and Banker Wil¬ 
liam Tecumseh Sherman could testify. 

The Vigilance committee of ’56 was or¬ 
ganized in Know-Nothing Hall, moving to 
105 y 2 Sacramento st. (it is now No. 243) 
when William T. Coleman and his lieuten¬ 
ants decided that the times cried for mili¬ 
tary organization and drastic action. 

Fifty-six was a worse year than ’51—times 
were hard, bad men were violent and crime 


was entrenched in politics. The flash from 
Casey’s gun set the city aflame. His victim, 
James King of William, died, and Coleman’s 
cohorts wrested him from the Broadway 
jail, taking Cora, another killer, for good 
measure. 

Fort Gunnybags was ready with its 
breastwork of sand bags, 10 feet high and 
six feet thick, its armed patrol, and its men¬ 
acing cannon. Shrift was short but orderly, 
and as the great editor was borne to Lone 
Mountain Cemetery, Casey and Cora did 
their dreadful dance upon the air. The 
committee hanged two other murderers, 
Bruce and Hetherington. A score of political 
rogues were exiled. Justice Terry of the Su¬ 
preme Court was imprisoned and released. 
Ned McGowan fled for his life through hair¬ 
breadth adventure after adventure. Years 
later he returned to San Francisco, a broken 
old man, to receive the bounty of William T. 
Coleman, for the “avenger of blood” knew 
how to forgive. 

Their work done, thousands of Vigilantes 
paraded their strength and disbanded. The 
threat to evildoers remained. Out of that 
“popular tribunal” of ’56 grew the People’s 
Party that kept San Francisco politics clean 
for several years. 
























































































































I'm sad and lonely here. 

Though joy and ivealth surround me, 

I dare not speak, f° r f ear 

Some fighting man will pound me. 

—PUT’S GOLDEN SONGSTER 

N OT all the miners headed for the gilded 
palaces of chance when they brought 
their nuggets and dust to San Francisco. 
Plenty of them were sober, saving, not to 
say timid fellows, and these would be at¬ 
tracted by the advertising of the What Cheer 
House at Sacramento and Leidesdorff. 

“The finest and cheapest house of enter¬ 
tainment in San Francisco . . . conducted on 
the European plan at New York prices. . . . 
First class lodging 50c per night and less 
rates by the week. . . . Beware of a place 
adjoining, called the Original House; said 
house is not connected with this hotel.” 

So ran the advertisements, omitting, how¬ 
ever, one important fact—the What Cheer 
House was conducted as a temperance hotel. 
But its thirsty customers had only to step 
next door. 

R. B. Woodward, whom his friends called 
a smart Yankee, founded what Stevenson in 
“The Wrecker” called “that large and un- 
aristocratic hostelry.” Visiting farmers liked 
its meals from 10c up, its beds “furnished 
with springs and curled hair mattresses,” 
and its linen that was changed every day. 
Miners appreciated its two large safes where 
they might store their gold before carrying it 
to the branch mint on Merchant st. 


All San Francisco patronized its free 
library, reading room and museum. Tradi¬ 
tion says that Bret Harte sometimes stepped 
daintily in to look at the European news¬ 
papers, doubtless reporting late for work at 
the office of U. S. Surveyor General Beale in 
the Sutro House nearby. The guests had 
their pick of two thousand volumes of his¬ 
tory, poetry, fiction and everything else from 
bee raising to religion. 

But the museum was the crowning glory 
of the What Cheer House. Woodward boasted 
that it surpassed the Academy of Natural 
Sciences and the Odd Fellows’ collection. 
Everybody went to see “the hawk with the 
sparrow in his claw” and “the woodpecker 
rapping on the dead branch.” Then there 
were the curiosities preserved “in alcoholic 
preparations”—snakes, horned frogs and 
even tapeworms, to say nothing of war 
clubs and idols from the South Seas, birds’ 
eggs, old coins, shells and minerals. Truly, 
as Woodward said, “there is abundant in¬ 
vitation to the higher, more refined and 
more respectable pleasures.” 

The What Cheer House had a long hey¬ 
day, and made Woodward so rich that he 
could well afford to establish Woodward’s 
Gardens of rapturous memory. 

After his regime the What Cheer proved 
less inviting to the farmers and the miners— 
perhaps they missed the museum and the 
clean sheets. Its last days were sadly 
undistinguished. 






























































































































































































vrn 




The minnesong can never die — 

Its pathos deep, its tender feeling. 

Its ringing notes, with lover's sigh. 

For aye to human heart appealing, 

—DANIEL O’CONNELL 

T HE minnesingers of an earlier San Fran¬ 
cisco found their best audience of-a- 
Sunday at Russ Gardens. What The Willows 
was to our French citizens, Russ Gardens 
was to our German-Americans. 

The Russ family—a dozen of them— 
came to San Francisco with part of Steven¬ 
son’s regiment on the “Loo Choo” which 
arrived in March of 1847. Christian and 
A. G. Russ continued here the business of 
goldsmiths and jewelers which they had 
pursued in New York. They prospered. It 
was not long before Christian Russ set up 
his household gods in an isolated region 
that may be identified today as the neigh¬ 
borhood of Sixth and Harrison sts. His 
home was on a little dry knoll in the midst 
of a swamp, and riders, going to visit him, 
were apt to find themselves mired down if 
they did not jog along with care. 

Out of the Russ place, lovingly devel¬ 
oped, grew Russ Gardens, opened as a 
popular resort in 1853. On May Day that 
year a thousand or so of our German- 
Americans went there under the auspices of 


the “Turner Gesang Verein” and, m 
words of the historian, “leaped, balanced 
and twirled, danced, sang, drank, smoked 
and made merry.” It was a suburban place 
of innocent delights, reached most conven¬ 
iently over the Folsom st, planked road. For 
Lutheran Sunday school picnics it was be¬ 
yond compare. On one great holiday the 
inimitable Blondin climbed a tight rope 
slanting from the ground to the top of the 
pavilion, pushing a wheelbarrow before 
him. 

Writing in 1860, J. M. Hutchings tells of 
a dear old German woman trying to per¬ 
suade an Irish lassie to marry and make a 
home. The Irish girl pointed out that 
marriage seemed to involve a great deal of 
hard work. 

“O yes,” said her German mentor: “Of 
course we must all work for a living. My 
husband and I are very happy the whole of 
the week. I wash clothes, and he mends old 
boots and shoes from Monday morning 
until Saturday night. But we always go to 
Russ Gardens on Sunday!” 

The pioneer Russes built the Russ House 
in 1861, and on its site stands the Russ 
Building of today. More important, how- 
ever—they gave the city the land where 
Columbia Park has ever since been a 
South-of-Market breathing space. 









































































Where hundreds knelt in worship to their Cod, 
Where swelled the organ's mighty, rhythmic prayer 
And voices blent in chorused reverence. 

The stricken temple rears, like pleading arms. 

Its naked, fleshless towers to the sky . 

—LOUIS J. STELLMAN 

T HESE verses were written after the 
18th of April, 1906, when all San 
Francisco mourned the ruin of a beloved 
landmark. There was nothing on our old 
skyline to compare with the golden globes 
that topped the spires of Temple Emanu-El. 
To Jew and gentile alike the glorious fane 
was a symbol of San Francisco’s deep and 
unostentatious spirituality. Ichabod! 

The congregation Emanu-El dates from 
the latter part of 1850. It was organized in 
one room on Bush st. between Montgomery 
and Sansome with Emanuel M. Berg as its 
first president. Its second temporary quar¬ 
ters were at Stockton and Green; its first 
synagogue, at Broadway between Powell and 
Mason, was occupied in 1854 with Henry 
Seligman (later a great New York banker) 
as president. 

Dr. Elkan Cohn became rabbi in 1860, 
and a year later the Sutter st. property was 
bought for $15,000 from B. Davidson, the San 
Francisco agent for Rothschilds. The new 
temple was dedicated in 1866, a newspaper 


noting with pride that “the building was 
illuminated with gas, making a most strik¬ 
ing appearance.” In 1889 the venerable 
Elkan Cohn was succeeded by the scholarly 
chronicler of Emanu-El, Jacob Voorsanger. 

San Francisco had great architects in 
the 60s, as it has today. William Patton, 
architect of Emanu-El, was criticized for 
“imbrication,” but his sturdy fabric passed 
unshaken through the earthquake of 1868 
and the combined assault of temblor and 
fire in 1906. When the mournful day came 
when it had to make room for 450 Sutter 
st., it was as hard to tear down as the old 
Palace Hotel. 

None loved its architectural nobility more 
than our lamented Willis Polk. Passing it 
one day with a crony who rather prided him¬ 
self on his appreciation of design, the latter 
remarked, “Is it not excellent Gothic?” 

Willis stopped and pounded his cane 
angrily on the sidewalk. “You are like all 
the rest,” he exclaimed. “When you see a 
beautiful thing you want to put a tag on it. 
It is not excellent Gothic. It is excellent 
William Patton.” 

The new Emanu-El at Arguello blvd. and 
Lake st. is unsurpassed in purity and dignity 
of architecture, but it cannot compensate us 
for the loss of those golden sentinels that 
saluted the sun 165 feet above our pedestrian 
concerns. 

































































































































































Oh, still she lives, and fairer than before! 

Her children still surround her, and her towers 
Gleam in the morning! 

—GEORGE STERLING. 

B UT not her Shot Tower! It survives only 
in memory, and in pictures—there used 
to be one in the old school geography. For 
more than 40 years it dominated South of 
Market in the same way that Temple 
Emanu-El did the northern streets. The 
temple rose 165 feet, but the Shot Tower had 
a proud eminence of 200 feet. 

A wooden structure rising above a three- 
story brick building, the Shot Tower stood 
at the southeast corner of First and Howard 
sts. from 1864 until 1906. It was erected for 
the Selby Smelting & Lead Co. of which A. J. 
Ralston (brother of “the Duke of Belmont”) 
was president. For years Mayor Thomas H. 
Selby’s son Prentiss was superintendent. The 
shake of 1906 couldn’t budge the grand old 
structure; the fire, of course, swept it away. 


There wasn’t a boy in all San Francisco 
who didn’t yearn to get inside to see the 
molten metal dropping from the top of the 
tower through sieves into the well of water 
in the basement. At first school classes 
were admitted, but there is always danger 
around molten lead, and, besides, the boys 
loaded their pockets with shot, so general 
sightseeing was discontinued. 

Shot of all sizes including Minie balls 
was manufactured, and there was also a 
large production of sheet and bar lead, with 
lead wire and lead pipe. It was a sizeable 
industry, employing 50 hands in the 60s and 
three times as many at its peak of activity 
in the 80s. A good many Chinese worked 
there, sewing up the 25-pound shot bags. 
Its business covered the Pacific coast, with 
shot exports to Japan, China and Siberia. 

An office of the American Smelting & 
Refining Co. occupies the old corner; the 
lead, however, drops nowadays at Selby up 
the bay. 































































































So here's a toast to Pine street, and California, too. 
And Sansome, and Montgomery, and the alleys run¬ 
ning through. 

—J. FRANK MARONEY. 

J OHN PARROTT, a Virginia gentleman of 
family and wealth, was a leading mer¬ 
chant and United States consul at Mazatlan 
when gold was discovered at Coloma. He 
brought the first sizeable fortune for invest¬ 
ment in San Francisco. “He was famous,” 
says Bancroft, “for his uniformly successful 
investments.” Among his holdings were the 
site of the Emporium, a corner at Sutter and 
Montgomery, and the lot now occupied by 
the Financial Center Building. 

On that northwest corner of Montgomery 
and California sts. he built “Parrott’s 
Granite Block,” and built it so strong that 
the varied assaults of 74 years were power¬ 
less to shake it. 

The granite was quarried and cut in 
China and came here with a force of Chinese 
workers who alone could read the bench¬ 
marks on the ashlar. There still exists the 
contract for their services, signed with their 
thumb marks in 1852, a year before Bertillon 
was born. 

Fire was the menace of menaces when 


the Parrott Building was erected, and it 
immediately set the fashion for those fire¬ 
proof structures built like fortresses, with 
shutters and doors of wrought iron, that 
were distinctively San Franciscan. It was 
due also to John Parrott that granite became 
a popular building material. 

With Adams & Co., Page, Bacon & Co., 
and Wells Fargo as tenants, it was the hub 
of the financial district. These were all 
express companies and banking institutions 
patronized by every miner in the gold fields. 
Page, Bacon suspended on Feb. 22, 1853, pre¬ 
cipitating several major disasters. Next day 
was our “Black Friday” when Adams & Co. 
crashed with liabilities of a million and a 
half. Thereupon Wells Fargo took and held 
a strong lead in express and banking. 

One terrible day in 1866 the manager 
went to the rear of the express office and 
hit an unclaimed box with an ax. It con¬ 
tained nitro-glycerine, and the explosion 
destroyed nine lives. The building was not 
seriously damaged. 

Perhaps our most admired veteran, the 
Parrott Building, disappeared in 1926 to the 
profound regret of every old San Franciscan. 
The Chinese granite went to Pebble Beach to 
pave a sunken garden for Templeton 
Crocker. 
































































































































All hail! ye brethren of the mystic tie! 

Who feed the hungry, heed the orphan s cry; 

Who clothe the naked, dry the widow's tear. 
Befriend the exile, bear the stranger's bier. 

—W. H. RHODES (“Caxton”) 

C ALIFORNIA NO. 1, the first Masonic lodge 
in San Francisco, received its charter 
late in ’48 and organized Nov. 17, 1849, in a 
third-story room at 247 Montgomery st. (it 
would be about 726 Montgomery st. today) 
over the store of Payne & Sherwood, auc¬ 
tioneers. 

Among the earliest members were Col. 
Jonathan D. Stevenson of Stevenson’s regi¬ 
ment, Rodman M. Price, purser of Commo¬ 
dore Sloat’s squadron; Robert A. Parker of 
the Parker House on the Plaza, and John W. 
Geary, first alcalde of San Francisco. 

In 1860 the Masons had their headquar¬ 
ters near the Plaza where their parade 
formed for the grand ceremony of laying 
the cornerstone of a new building at the 
northwest corner of Post and Montgomery. 

The procession was led by Alexander G. 
Abell, who had been U. S. consul in the 
Sandwich Islands. N. Greene Curtis, grand 
master and a brilliant lawyer of Sacra¬ 
mento, the elderly Col. Stevenson, and Al- 
vinza Hayward were prominent figures in 
the formalities of the occasion. A banquet 
followed at Tucker’s Academy of Music, with 


Henry F. Williams, the first man admitted 
to the craft in San Francisco, among the 
speakers. 

Masonic Temple was completed and oc¬ 
cupied in 1863. It was a distinguished 
building, inside and out, designed by Reuben 
Clark (architect for the state Capitol) and 
Henry Kenitzer. It remained a feature of 
San Francisco’s busiest downtown section 
for 43 years. 

Only the cornerstone—lead within cop¬ 
per within granite—escaped the fire of 1906. 
It was reset, unopened, when the grand new 
Masonic Temple at the head of Van Ness 
ave. was dedicated in 1911. 

Many of the grand masters who presided 
at the old Masonic Temple left their impress 
on San Francisco life: John Mills Browne, 
surgeon-general of the U. S. navy; William 
C. Belcher, Leonidas E. Pratt, Morris M. 
Estee, W. Frank Pierce, Justice Angellotti 
and Senator-Gov. George C. Perkins. 

In and out of the old building walked 
many distinguished men connected with the 
Masonry of our earlier days: Lawrence Bar¬ 
ret, the actor; Mark Twain, the Comstock 
big four of Mackey, Flood, Fair and O’Brien; 
Justice Stephen J. Field of the U. S. Supreme 
Court; James King of William; Thomas 
Starr King; Pelton of the water wheel; 
James Frazer Reed of the Donner party, and 
Leland Stanford, our Civil War governor. 

















































































































































































The hands of Old St. Mary's turn 
But forward, and her nearby chime 
Has well intoned the flight of time. 

—NEILL C. WILSON. 

T HE bell of Old St. Mary’s was blessed and 
hung on June 16, 1855. Five days later 
“many sufferers” sent a letter to the Alta- 
California asking, “Can there be anything 
more provoking than to be daily aroused 
from your slumber by the sound of a huge 
bell and at your very ears?” The editor was 
not impressed by the suffering of these 
“slug-a-beds,” as he called them, retorting 
in his most withering style, “Would our cor¬ 
respondent prevent the Carillon of Bruges 
or the chimes of Christ Church?” 

The first cathedral of Archbishop Joseph 
Sadoc Alemany was a little wooden shanty 
on the site of the present church of St. Fran¬ 
cis on Filbert st. 

John Sullivan, afterwards the first presi¬ 
dent of the Hibernia Bank, gave the land 


for Old St. Mary’s, and the saintly Alemany 
occupied his episcopal seat at midnight mass 
on Christmas, 1854. 

Only those who can remember what pre¬ 
ceded St. Mary’s Park across the street fully 
appreciate the propriety of the inscription 
under the clock of Old St. Mary’s: “Son, ob¬ 
serve the time and fly from evil.” For many 
years uncleanness was very close to godli¬ 
ness, but all that is better forgotten. 

Meanwhile Chinatown had advanced 
southward along Dupont st., so that the 
venerable church was pretty much sur¬ 
rounded by alien neighbors. Yet its old con¬ 
gregation came loyally from all parts of the 
city to kneel with newcomers before the high 
altar. 

The Paulist Fathers today have a good 
many devout Chinese parishioners, and 
these, perhaps, are not as distracted as the 
rest when the discordant music of a Chinese 
funeral blares down Grant ave. during high 
mass. 





















































































































































































In the balcony jutting above the wild ocean, 

Like scene an Arabian night reveals. 

Where oft We linger, with gay emotion 
To look at the rocks and the sunning seals. 

—EMMA FRANCES DAWSON. 

jjTHE Cliff House is at the end of Geary st., 
I called also Point Lobos ave., and the 
Cliff House road. The Geary st. cable car 
connects with a steam railroad which runs 
to Golden Gate Park. When the steam car 
reaches First ave., it turns to go southward 
to the park. At this bend, persons going to 
the ocean leave the steam car and take a 
horse car which runs out to within a mile 
of the Cliff House, and they can walk the 
remainder of the distance, or take an om¬ 
nibus.” 

Thus Hoitt’s Guide of 1883 when the Cliff 
House was 20 years old. But, of course, the 
elite, then and theretofore, went in no such 
leisurely fashion. They rode out there on 
the best of horseflesh, or were whirled in 
family victorias and hired “hacks.” 

The Cliff House was built in 1863 for 
Junius G. Foster, who had been running the 
International Hotel on Jackson st. Very 
popular indeed was Mine Host Foster, and 
it was not long before his establishment on 
the ultimate verge of the west was famous 
the world over for cuisine and gayety set 
to the music of popping corks. Its register 
(had it been kept consistently) would be a 
beadroll of international greatness and 
notoriety. 


Perhaps it was too gay for the taste of 
Adolph Sutro, for when he bought the Cliff 
House ranch in 1883 Foster went out, and 
after an experiment or two, genial “Jim” Wil¬ 
kins went in, to remain for a score of crowd¬ 
ed years. The only condition imposed by Sutro 
was that “the establishment should always 
be maintained as a respectable resort,” and 
Wilkins, with his successors, John Tait, Roy 
Carruthers and John Farley, kept the com¬ 
pact. 

Early in the Wilkins regime a schooner 
loaded with nitroglycerine ran ashore at 
Point Lobos and blew up. The Cliff House was 
badly damaged, but was immediately re¬ 
stored. The explosion frightened the sea 
lions away, but they grew homesick and 
came back; their behavior was the same in 
1906. On Christmas night of ’94 the Cliff 
House went up in flames, whereupon Mayor 
Sutro built the large chateau-like place 
which lasted until another fire consumed it 
in 1907. And so our present Cliff House 
came to be. 

A Presidential order of 1918 prohibited 
the sale of liquor within half a mile of a 
military reservation. That ended the es¬ 
sential glories of the Cliff House after 55 
colorful years. But it looks to a future of 
better days. 

However, the barking sea lions are indif¬ 
ferent to these vicissitudes, and neither 
presidential order nor the Constitution can 
mar the beauty of one of the most magnifi¬ 
cent spots on our continent. 












































































"This was the most unkindest cut of all." 

—JULIUS CAESAR. 

I T WAS Charles Warren Stoddard who ap¬ 
plied the words of Mark Antony to the 
“bloodless speculators” who cut an ugly gash 
through Rincon Hill in 1869 and ’70, ruining 
its beauty forever. And the Second st. bridge 
was worthy of the Second st. cut. Says the 
indignant Stoddard: 

“A cross street was lowered a little, and it 
leaped the chasm in an agony of wood and 
iron, the most unlovely object in a city that 
it made up of all unloveliness.” 

Stoddard knew, for he lived on the edge 
of the precipice in the remains of “a bank¬ 
er’s Gothic home” balanced precariously over 
the abyss and destined eventually to tumble 
into it. 

To name the Rincon Hillites of the palmy 
days is to recite a litany of San Francisco’s 
wealth and fashion: Sather, Kittle, Keeney, 
McLane—Donahue, Kip, Newhall, Tubbs— 
Duperu, Doane, Somers, Pratt—Pope, Talbot, 
McAllister, Lincoln—Miller and Scott—there 
are many more. Here and hereabouts, more¬ 
over, four heroes of the .soon-to-be Civil War 
had their homes—Sherman, Hooker, Halleck 
and Albert Sidney Johnston. It was “one of 


the most San Francisco-y parts of San 
Francisco.” 

Only a few of the fine families remained 
after the hill was ruined by the savage sur¬ 
gery of the Second st. cut. But there was 
equipoise—Warren Stoddard came to live 
there. 

One day in January, 1880, a pallid, shabby 
young man with long hair, piercing eyes and 
a mouth of humor, walked up Second st., 
passing Stein, Simon & Co.’s wholesale dry- 
goods establishment, Hueter Bros, paint 
store, Engine House No. 4, Charles Mont¬ 
gomery’s Temperance Hotel, and John Wie- 
land’s brewery. He toiled with considerable 
difficulty (for he was quite ill) up a flight 
of rickety steps to the beetle of the cliff. 

This was Robert Louis Stevenson going to 
call on Charles Warren Stoddard. It was a 
momentous call. Stoddard’s ruinous sanc¬ 
tum was a museum of the South Seas. Under 
the spell of Charlie’s conversation R. L. S. 
formed the determination of going to those 
“islands of tranquil delight.” 

When he took his leave of “Pip Pepper- 
pod” and retraced his way along the Second 
st. cut, across Market st., and so to his lodg¬ 
ings at Mrs. Carson’s, 608 Bush st., he had 
Melville’s “Omoo” under one arm and Stod¬ 
dard’s “South Sea Idyls” under the other. 
The course of his life was changed. 































































The play is spent, the night soon old. 

The cafes out, the flowers sold. 

The taxis gone, the sidewalks bare 
From Eddy street to Union Square. 

—NEILL C. WILSON. 

I MAGINE Union Square, most important of 
John McLaren’s downtown beauty spots, 
housing a Mechanics’ Fair! That was many 
years ago—during the Civil War. 

In comparatively recent times Union 
Square has extended its hospitality to other 
structures. For a while the California pro¬ 
motion committee had a little building there. 
One day prominent citizens gathered on the 
steps to address a graft prosecution mass 
meeting. Abe Ruef came along and stole the 
show! Here, too, the city permitted the con¬ 
struction of the “Little St. Francis Hotel” 
after the fire. 

The Mechanics’ Institute has a long and 
honorable history. It was organized late in 
1854 to advance the mechanic arts and 
sciences. Many of its early members were 
apprentices in the various trades. In June 
of ’55 a room was rented in Sam Brannan’s 
Express Building (where the Kohl Building 
stands) and the now-famous library was 
started with four books—the Bible, the Con¬ 
stitution of the United States, an Encyclo¬ 
paedia of Architecture and “Curtis on Con¬ 
veyancing.” 

The thoughtful, earnest men who 
launched the institute decided that an an¬ 


nual fair for the benefit of mechanics and 
manufacturers would be a help toward civic 
progress. So in September, 1857, the first 
fair opened on Montgomery st., between Post 
and Sutter. The pavilion had a canvas roof 
and a canvas-covered dome. 

Pavilion No. 2 was erected in 1860 at the 
southwest corner of Montgomery and Sutter. 
Its acoustics were so poor that a mass meet¬ 
ing held there had to adjourn into the street 
“as the speakers could not be heard within 
its sound-dissipating roof and walls.” 

The third pavilion arose on Union Square 
in 1864, and successful fairs were held that 
and the following year. Then it was torn 
down, and a more ambitious structure pic¬ 
tured here took its place. 

The city had given the institute permis¬ 
sion to use the square, but very wisely re¬ 
fused permanent possession. So the second 
pavilion on Union Square was torn down in 
1871, a much larger one being erected in ’74, 
at Eighth and Mission. In that last fair on 
Union Square there were exhibits from 
China and Japan, the first ever made in a 
foreign country by those two governments. 
It was a gesture of gratitude for the com¬ 
mercial treaties negotiated by Anson Bur¬ 
lingame. 

In 1881 the institute bought a block 
bounded by Larkin, Grove, Polk and Hayes, 
and built the sixth and last Mechanics’ 
Pavilion, famous not only for fairs and 
political meetings but for some of the great¬ 
est prize fights ever staged anywhere. 





























































































































Prince, if I ever chance to make my pile, 

I know no place that 1 Would rather be! 

I’ll spend it here and spend it. Prince, in style — 
Old Market st. looks pretty good to me! 

—WALDEMAR YOUNG. 

IASPER O’FARRELL had the road to the 
J Mission in mind when he laid out Market 
st. on paper; he could not possibly know that 
it was to become one of the finest thorough¬ 
fares in the country. 

The intersection of Market, Post and 
Montgomery was so little congested, so 
“open and airy” in 1861 that it was chosen 
as a convenient spot for the great al fresco 
“Union Demonstration” of May 11 at which 
Gens. Sumner and Shields and Senators 
Latham and McDougall denounced the fir¬ 
ing on Fort Sumter. 

It took Montgomery st. quite a while to 
grow south to Market. The Masonic Temple 
at the corner of Post and Montgomery was 
completed in 1863. Across the street, where 
the Crocker Building now stands, was the 
Antelope Restaurant specializing in oysters, 
any style, served for 20c. When that gore lot 
brought $300,000 in ’73 old-timers raised 
their eyebrows and wondered whether all 
was well. But then, it was not until ’74 that 


Ralston started building the Palace Hotel. 

Montgomery st. formally saluted Market 
early in the 60’s when a substantial building 
arose where is now the main office of the 
Wells Fargo Bank & Union Trust Co. The 
Hibernia Bank moved into this building in 
1867 from its original headquarters on Jack- 
son near Montgomery, occupying the ground 
floor and some rooms upstairs until Septem¬ 
ber, 1892, when it went to its present classic 
banking house at McAllister and Jones. 

Also in that old building were the offices 
of the San Francisco & San Jose Railroad 
Co. California’s first railroad was com¬ 
pleted in 1856 between Sacramento and Fol¬ 
som. The road to San Jose was our second. 
After three earlier attempts at financing, it 
was at last soundly launched, to be com¬ 
pleted in 1864. It reached Gilroy in 1869. 
Consolidation with the Southern Pacific 
came in the following year. 

This, one of the most important of our 
downtown street corners, was bought by the 
Union Trust Co. from the Hibernia Bank 
about the time the latter moved out. A new 
building replaced the old, and the trust com¬ 
pany took possession in ’95. 

By that time Market st. “looked pretty 
good,” not only to San Franciscans and Cali¬ 
fornians, but to world travelers as well. 





















































































































































































’ Twas his master mind planned and designed 
The courts and corridors that so engage 
Our admiration in their contemplation , 

And the great bay windows lil^e a mammoth cage. 
'Twas the gorgeous Palace raised the spleen and 
malice 

Of envious scribblers and artists vile 

Who would glady plunder and steal the thunder 

Of this shining meteor from the Emerald Isle. 

—EDWARD McGRATH 

A RCHITECTS used to disagree as far back 
as the seventies! The Palace Hotel that 
John P. Gaynor designed for William Ral¬ 
ston did not please all of Gaynor’s confreres 
as the quotation implies, but San Francisco 
in particular and the world in general pro¬ 
claimed it the finest hotel of its time. 

At the outbreak of the Civil War, First 
Lieut. Phil Sheridan, leaving San Francisco, 
declared earnestly to his friends, “I’ll come 
back a captain, or I won’t come back at all.” 
“Fighting Phil” finally returned in 1875, not 
a captain, but a lieutenant-general, and was 
grandly feted at the new Palace Hotel. 

When the Palace opened on the second 
of October, 1875, our citizens were awed by 
its “courts and corridors,” the like of which 
they had never seen even with the eye of 
fancy. Twelve nights later the carriages of 
all our beauty and our chivalry, to say noth¬ 
ing of officialdom, rolled into the court for 


the banquet in honor of the hero of Win¬ 
chester. It was the first of a thousand Palace 
Hotel repasts that have brought glory to 
San Francisco. 

Four years later (September, 1879) an¬ 
other of our old acquaintances came back. 
When U. S. Grant was here before the war 
he stayed at the What Cheer House. It was 
the Palace this time. Nothing before or since 
in San Francisco can be compared with the 
mad excitement and enthusiasm of his re¬ 
ception from the moment the City of Tokio 
put him ashore. As he entered the court, 500 
voices led by Madame Fabbri were raised in 
a song of welcome. The singers were sta¬ 
tioned in the open balconies, tier above tier, 
and the effect was magnificent. The farewell 
banquet to Grant surpassed all that the Pal¬ 
ace had achieved up to that time. 

Other Presidents knew the old court of 
the Palace—to say nothing of kings and po¬ 
tentates and mighty soldiers. Humble towns¬ 
men used to hire carriages, “resting on cush¬ 
ions their astounded bones,” just for the de¬ 
lightful experience of one grand entree. 

“Anything can happen in San Francisco,” 
said Oscar Wilde. Everything has happened 
at the Palace, including the lying-in-state 
of a Hawaiian monarch. Sandwich Islanders 
fanned the royal corpse night and day, so 
that, as “Petey” Bigelow slyly wrote, “There 
were no flies on Kalakaua.” 


































































































































































































































Great houses here. 

Dull, opulent, severe; 

Dives' gold birds on guarding lamps a-wing — 
Dead gold that may not sing. 

—CHARLOTTE PERKINS STETSON. 

D ENNIS KEARNEY was fond of hurling the 
charge Anglomania at our millionaires, 
so it was appropriate enough that Nob Hill 
should borrow its name from English slang. 
“A rather windy Olympus,” Robert Louis 
Stevenson called it; also, in his teasing vein, 
“a kind of slum, being the habitat of the 
mere millionaire . . . there they dwell upon 
the hilltop high-raised above men’s clamour, 
and the tradewind blows between their pal¬ 
aces and the deserted streets.” 

The Central Pacific and the Comstock 
gave Nob Hill its paramount palaces. The 
Big Four of the railroad—Huntington, Stan¬ 
ford, Crocker and Hopkins—had their man¬ 
sions here. And Flood of the other quartet— 
Fair planned but never built. The Ponds 
were there, too, and the Tobins, and the 
Townes whose classic dwellings gave Golden 
Gate Park the admired “Portals of the Past.” 

Of all that grandeur the brownstone 
Flood mansion alone survives—enlarged by 
Willis Polk to house the Pacific-Union Club. 
Otherwise only names remain to localize all 
that burned magnificence—Stanford Court, 
Huntington Apartments, the Fairmont and 
the Mark Hopkins Hotels. Where the Crock¬ 
ers had their homes nursery maids sun 


babies in a quiet park, and Grace Cathedral 
will soon point its spire at heaven. A peace¬ 
ful spot! How different from that night 
in ’77 when Dennis Kearney at the head of 
a mob of some 2000 climbed the hill to de¬ 
nounce Charles Crocker’s spite fence! That 
most historical of our spite fences was built 
because Yung, the undertaker, refused to re¬ 
linquish a lot that would have rounded out 
the Crocker holding. 

Interest in Nob Hill caused Stanford, 
Hopkins and Crocker to undertake the con¬ 
struction of the California st. cable line. 
They obtained a franchise in ’76, and the 
road started running from Kearny to Fill¬ 
more in ’78. Meanwhile Crocker had acquired 
most of his partners’ stock. Mark Hopkins, 
in particular, was glad to get out, saying that 
the cable line “would probably pay dividends 
at the same time as Hotel de Hopkins”—an 
irreverent reference to his own palace, and 
incidentally a mistake in judgment. 

Gertrude Atherton put Nob Hill into “The 
Californians,” one of the best of her novels, 
treating it in kindlier fashion than R. L. S. 
San Francisco as a whole was proud of its 
outward splendor, glad to show it to visitors. 
Only one interior was generally known—the 
“Hotel de Hopkins” after it became an art 
gallery. On the first Friday of every month 
admission was free of charge, and how our 
boys and girls did revel in its ebony and 
marble, sometimes forgetting to look at the 
pictures! 






























































































Broad piles of buildings. 

Pricked through here and there 
By a tall steeple. 

—Edward Rowland Sill. 

H OLY TRINITY (it became Trinity shortly 
afterwards) was the first Episcopal par¬ 
ish formed in San Francisco and in the 
diocese of California. 

Two services were held in July of ’49 by 
the Rev. Flavel Scott Mines at the American 
House on Stockton st. A meeting followed, 
with the omnipresent Col. Stevenson of 
Stevenson’s Regiment presiding, and it was 
resolved that a parish should be organized. 

In August, ’49, a lot was acquired at the 
southwest corner of Powell and Jackson. A 
church rose, and the first service was held in 
October. 

Late in ’51 a corrugated iron church was 
built on the north side of Pine, east of 
Kearny. Rector Mines died, a victim of tuber¬ 
culosis, spiritually active to the last, to be 
succeeded by the Rev. C. B. Wyatt in 1852. 
S. C. Thrall became rector in ’56, with Wyatt 
returning in ’62. 

The growing parish demanded a larger 
church, so a fine wooden edifice at Post and 
Powell (where the Fitzhugh Building stands) 
was consecrated in the Indian summer of 
1867. Two years later Elias Birdsall suc¬ 


ceeded Wyatt as rector. He was followed by 
Dr. T. B. Lyman, who remained until the end 
of ’74, when he was consecrated Bishop of 
North Carolina. George D. Silliman was 
locum tenens for a year; then came the rec¬ 
torship of the well remembered Dr. H. W. 
Beers, to last until ’89. J. Saunders Reed, 
George E. Walk, Henry E. Cooke—these rec¬ 
tors bring us to the end of ’99. Then came 
F. W. Clampett, one of the most beloved 
clergymen San Francisco has ever known. 

Meanwhile the site on Union Square was 
sold, and Bishop Nichols (let his name be 
spoken with reverence) laid the cornerstone 
of the present charming Trinity at Bush and 
Gough in September of ’92. 

When Dr. Clampett retired, the beloved 
Dr. H. H. Powell was locum tenens until 
C. P. Deems became rector in 1922. 

In the last Trinity but one many distin¬ 
guished citizens of San Francisco were pew 
holders—Gen. L. H. Allen, William F. Bab¬ 
cock, S. M. Van Wyck, Prof. Pomeroy, Senator 
Miller and Gov. Bartlett. 

Who will write in an all-embracing way 
the religious history of San Francisco? It 
has been neglected, perhaps because it does 
not quickly yield its riches of color and 
beauty. Mission Dolores, Emanu-El, Old St. 
Mary’s, Calvary Presbyterian, Trinity—these 
and many others have a close-knit unity of 
influence. 













































































































































Old forms and old faces I view from my stali 
Long since praised or blamed by the Critic of All. 

—MABEL PORTER PITTS. 

I T would be much easier to write of the 
Baldwin Hotel as a hotel had it not em¬ 
bodied the Baldwin Theater. 

The hotel’s glittering history spanned the 
years from ’76 to ’98, when it went up in the 
most spectacular fire of San Francisco’s 
intermediate period. It had long been 
known as “Lucky Baldwin’s fire-trap,” yet 
people had no hesitation in staying there. 

Some stayed forever. “Lucky” Baldwin 
declared that his hotel had to burn down 
to rid him of his eternal non-paying guest, 
the never-to-be-forgotten Col. Henry Kowal- 
sky. Tradition has it that the colonel fell 
asleep on the fire escape half way to safety. 
This may be untrue, but it is plausible to 
the many who can still remember Kowalsky: 
one foot on the rail of any downtown saloon, 
a glass of the best Bourbon upraised to his 
lips, a sentence half-completed, and lo! he 
lapses into perpendicular and snoring 
slumber! 

That Baldwin bar! Tod Sloan of the 
thoroughbreds, Jake Schaefer of the balk¬ 
line, “Bill” Barnes of the Durant case, Riley 
Grannan of all the west, Peter Jackson of 
the prize ring, and “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” 
(how many remember him with Parson 
Davies and L. R. Stockwell at the New Cali¬ 


fornia Theater?) could be observed there 
sipping champagne. In that self-same bar 
Kowalsky met one day an incognito from 
Belgium (he is King Albert now) and took 
him so pleasantly under his wing that shortly 
afterwards the colonel became King 
Leopold’s press agent in Washington during 
the international Congo rubber scandal. 

But the Baldwin Theater transcended the 
Baldwin Hotel. Its 50-cent gallery produced 
a generation of the most exacting dramatic 
critics. It was opened in ’76 by Barry Sulli¬ 
van in “Richard the Third.” The cast in¬ 
cluded Eugene’s father, James O’Neill; W. H. 
Crane, David Belasco, and Maude Adams’ 
mother, Annie, with James A. Herne as stage 
manager. It closed one night (November, 
1898), on William Gillette in “Secret Service,” 
and at 3 in the morning, despite a summons 
to every bit of fire apparatus in San Fran¬ 
cisco, the flames took hold so angrily that 
they destroyed hotel, theater and two lives. 
Thereafter E. J. Baldwin sold the property 
to James L. Flood, who had the great archi¬ 
tect Pissis give us the Flood Building that 
dominates Market and Powell today. 

What a record the Baldwin Theater had! 
The Palmer company, Mary Anderson, Irving 
and Terry, Ada Rehan, Booth and Barrett, 
the Daly company—no history of the Eng¬ 
lish-speaking stage from ’76 to ’98 can omit 
the theater that “Lucky” Baldwin imbedded 
in the midst of his hostelry. 



























































^OALAMBO^ 

ferry 


PORTLAND. OR 11 51 LOUIS 


SAM JOSEIlSACKAil 


It^'lOUHOUnflcHKACf'll 


[hllvuyu 




A shifting span of the road so many take. 

The ferry chums her way in the moonless night. 
And, come and gone like giant moths in the light. 
The seagulls follow her Wake. 

—GEORGE STERLING. 

T HE afternoon of July 11, 1851, found a 
grim procession marching with military 
cadence from the Vigilante headquarters on 
Battery st. to Dennis’ Market and California 
st. wharf. In platoons, 10 abreast, with 
James Stuart, outlaw, in the center, they 
halted before a derrick on the pier. It was 
soon over. . . . Apparently it was not ex¬ 
pertly done. Says a contemporary: “The 
first man hung (Jenkins) was dead before 
he was swung up, the second was alive after 
he was cut down.” 

Fortunately, the foot of Market st. and 
the Ferry Building have many pleasanter 
associations. 

That first wharf, commenced in July of 
’50, extended eastward 2000 feet from First 
st. and was 40 feet wide. Including the ex¬ 
tension of California st. to its junction with 
Market, it cost William E. Dennis $400,000. 

The beginnings of a Ferry Building, how¬ 
ever, date only from 1877 when three ferry 
slips were built with sheds over the aprons. 
Two were used by the Central Pacific, the 
third by the South Pacific Coast Railroad Co. 


Gradually the old wooden structure de¬ 
veloped, and Capt. Kentzel became its pre¬ 
siding genius. Very, very fat was the cap¬ 
tain, and his rattan cane was emblematic 
of the authority he exerted over hotel bark¬ 
ers who yelled too loud. 

There is nothing today like the old picnic 
crowds that assembled here every summer 
Sunday morning, bound for Badger’s Park 
in Brooklyn, Shell Mound at Emeryville and 
Schutzen Park in Alameda. After an up¬ 
roarious day they all came home on the 
same boat. It was a boisterous but friendly 
league of nations—the La Fayette and Gari¬ 
baldi Guards, the Schutzen Verein, the Ber- 
saglieri, the Wolfe Tone and the Emmet 
Guards, Jack Statman’s California Zouaves, 
to say nothing of the Plumbers & Gasfit- 
ters’ Association, and the roaring boys from 
Butchertown. The oldest organization 
marched off the ferry boat first and drew 
up to salute the others. The parade up Mar¬ 
ket st. was sternly military until group after 
group broke ranks at a favorite saloon. And 
so, good night! 

Of course, the old Ferry Building had a 
clock tower. Was it even then presided over 
by “the man who winds the ferry clock”? If 
so, he must have been very proud when 
he moved to his new eyrie in the beautiful 
gate-house to San Francisco designed by A. 
Paige Brown in 1894. 





























































































They say that one can stand on the hills 

And search strait and bay and shore-line in vain 

For sight of a single square-rigged spar! 

Where eyes 1 vere rvont to be amazed by a forest 
of sky-slabbing masts 
Norv only murlfing funnels are! 

—WILLIAM BROWN MELONEY. 

H OW many Lincoln Park golfers look down 
from the 13th tee or up from the 15th 
green to wonder about a cemetery-like 
shaft topping a knoll that commands a 
gorgeous view of the Golden Gate? How 
many have postponed their driving or put¬ 
ting to read this inscription: 

“Presented to the Ladies’ Seaman’s 
Friend Society by Dr. Henry D. Cogswell, a 
landmark of the seaman’s earthly port and 
resting place in which he awaits the advent 
of the great pilot for his eternal destiny. 
Dedicated to Mrs. Rebecca H. Lambert, the 
founder of this society, who by universal 
consent has merited the unqualified and 
lasting gratitude of the Seaman's Friend 
for her unselfish and lifelong devotion to 
their cause.” 

It is the only impressive monument 
Cogswell ever built, though cast iron like 
the rest, and it is part of the story of the 
old, obliterated Marine Hospital or Sailors’ 
Home. 

San Francisco gave the U. S. government 
six 50-varas at Rincon Point, Reuben Clark 
was appointed architect, and the corner¬ 
stone of the U. S. Marine Hospital was laid 


in April, 1853. It was completed in 
December at a cost of $250,000, with accom¬ 
modations for 500 patients. Every American 
sailor entering the port paid 25 cents a 
month for its upkeep; foreign sailors were 
not admitted. 

The government abandoned it after the 
earthquake of ’68. Idle for eight years, it 
was rented in 1876 to the city and county 
for one dollar a year—Uncle Sam was gen¬ 
erous in those days—and became the 
Sailors’ Home. Still at one dollar a year, 
it was turned over to the Ladies’ Seaman’s 
Friend Society, which had been founded 
years before by Rebecca H. Lambert, a 
noble rich woman. When misfortune came 
to Rebecca Lambert she remained in charge 
on a small salary. 

It ceased to be the Sailors’ Home in 
1912; the old windjamming sailors had dis¬ 
appeared from the port of San Francisco. 
Then the Associated Charities and a church 
group took it over, assigning its 500 beds 
to down-and-outers who sawed wood for 
board and lodgings. Its doors were finally 
closed July 18, 1918. Vandals broke in, it 
was a nuisance, so the government wrecked 
it in 1919 and built the marine quarter¬ 
masters’ offices on the site. 

The wrecking operations disclosed that 
it had been fireproofed with thick layers of 
clay beneath each floor. 

Rincon Hill has been cut and slashed 
almost out of recognition since the Marine 
Hospital at Main and Harrison saluted old 
St. Mary’s Hospital at First and Bryant. 





















































The ships for San Francisco 
Bring clerks and bearded miners — 

Old men and boys, they round the Horn 
And all are forty-niners. 

—JAMES MITCHELL CLARK. 

T OM HAYES was a lad of 26 when he came 
around the Horn to land in San Fran¬ 
cisco on July 1, 1849. He brought from 
New York a quantity of goods, the sale of 
which put him on his feet. Soon after his 
arrival he took up 150 acres of remote out¬ 
side land, and it is Hayes valley to this day. 

Politics used to be the breath of life in 
Hayes valley, and the first of its politicians 
was Col. Tom Hayes. At one time or another 
he was deputy sheriff, county clerk, presi¬ 
dent of the charter convention and mem¬ 
ber of the city council. 

Very few duels were ever fought on San 
Francisco soil, but Hayes valley was the 
scene of one. John Nugent of the Herald 
criticized Col. Hayes and was promptly 
challenged. They met “on the home 
grounds,” so to speak, with Mississippi 
rifles at 20 paces; the editor was severely 
wounded. Though Hayes had been a friend 
of David C. Broderick in New York he sec¬ 
onded Judge Terry in the fatal affair of ’59. 
And he was second for Assemblyman Show- 
alter of Mariposa when he killed Assembly- 
man Piercy of San Bernardino on the 


Fairfax estate near San Rafael—rifles at 
40 yards. 

The Hayes home stood in the midst of 
lawns, trees and fountains in the block 
bounded by Hayes, Van Ness, Grove and 
Franklin where St. Ignatius Church and 
College were afterwards built. He could 
afford a fine home, for Hayes’ Park with 
its restaurant and bar brought him a good 
deal of money. For the pleasure seekers 
who had no carriages of their own he built 
a steam railroad from Second and Market. 
For his friends he had lavish hospitality. 
For anybody who cared to buy he had lots 
to sell. One June day in 1868 Col. Tom 
took steamer for New York. He died at 
sea and was brought back to rest on Lone 
mountain. 

The Hayes home was the half-way stop¬ 
ping place between the city and Mission 
Dolores—hence the importance of Hayes st. 
As the city grew Hayes valley acquired 
many streets and many traditions. In P. J. 
Corbett’s livery stable a future champion 
of the world fought his first juvenile 
battles. Up and down Hayes st. Sconchin 
Maloney spouted Shakespeare. Romance 
budded between dances at Mowry’s Hall. 
Goldenson killed little Mamie Kelly and 
was near lynching at the Broadway jail. 
Ernest Holden and Kate Dalgleish delighted 
the boys and girls at the Grove Street 
Theater. 

Eheu, fugaces, Postume, Postume! 


































































A couple of Chinamen pass me in file. 

And presently, into the light, 

A castaway comes with her lip-weary smile 
And a heart that is cold as the night. 

—HOWARD V. SUTHERLAND 

O LD Pine st. from Kearny to Dupont was 
a hillside block of cobblestones and 
wooden sidewalks lined with rookeries, eat¬ 
ing places and deadfalls. Evil alleys ran 
north from it to California. Deserted by 
day, at dark it came furtively to life. Ste¬ 
venson should have put it in “The 
Wrecker,” but he missed it, though he re¬ 
fers obliquely to its most notorious rendez¬ 
vous. He writes (Jan. 10, 1880) from San 
Francisco, to Sidney Colvin in London: 

“Any time between eight and half-past 
nine in the morning, a slender gentleman 
in an ulster, with a volume buttoned into 
the breast of it, may be observed leaving 
No. 608 Bush and descending Powell with 
an active step. The gentleman is R. L. S.; 
the volume relates to Benjamin Franklin, 
on whom he meditates one of his charming 
essays. He descends Powell, crosses Market, 
and descends in Sixth on a Branch of the 
Original Pine Street Coffee House, no less; 


I believe he would be capable of going to 
the original itself, if he could only find it. 
In the Branch he seats himself at a table 
covered with waxcloth, and a pampered 
menial, of high-Dutch extraction and, in¬ 
deed, as yet only partially extracted, lays 
before him a cup of coffee, a roll, and a pat 
of butter, all, to quote the Deity, very good. 
A while ago, and R. L. S. used to find the 
supply of butter insufficient; but he has 
now learned the art to exactitude, and but¬ 
ter and roll expire at the same moment. For 
this refection he pays 10 cents, or five- 
pence sterling.” 

The Branch was on Fifth, not Sixth; it 
endured until the fire of 1906. The Original 
Pine Street Coffee House was at 510 Pine, 
about where the Hong Chow Temple now 
stands. 

The block improved somewhat as the 
years passed—it was the first pied-a-terre 
of our Japanese—but respectable citizens 
who had to pass that way eyed the coffee 
house askance and felt no impulse to view 
its sordid interior. Wrote a reporter in 1903: 

“The coffee house is a mere crevice in 
the side of the hill. It is an old landmark, 
and a place where night prowlers congre¬ 
gate at intervals from sunset until dawn.” 
































































































































































“Lives she yet?" Sir George repeated. All Were 
hushed as Concha drew 

Closer yet her nuns attire. “ Senor , pardon, she 
died too!" 

—BRET HARTE. 

B UT there is a soul in the love story of Con¬ 
cepcion de Arguello that can never die. 
Her body rests in the cemetery of the 
Dominican nuns at Benicia; her stainless 
heart is with us forever. 

The Officers’ Club at the Presidio is the 
oldest adobe in San Francisco, our one re¬ 
maining landmark of Spanish rule. It is 
more, much more. This is a shrine of im¬ 
mortal romance. For here Concepcion, “the 
little dancing saint,” was born and grew to 
beautiful, vivacious young womanhood, and 
here she plighted her troth to the great 
Rezanov, chamberlain of Czar Alexander I. 
Every deathless love story is a pageant— 


Concha’s is colorful with a background of 
Spanish soldiers, Franciscan padres, Indians 
of the bay and Russian sailors. Beside the 
courtly Muscovite and the 16-year-old seno- 
rita stand the grave comandante, her father, 
and her brother, the dashing Luis, destined 
to be California’s first Mexican governor. 
The tears, the tragedy and the sublimity of 
what followed are part of our best known 
history: Rezanov dies in Siberian Krasno¬ 
yarsk, Concha waits weary years until Sir 
George Simpson imparts the facts at Santa 
Barbara, her second troth is plighted to God. 

It is a long way back to that romance of 
1806. These walls are older than that. Juni- 
pero Serra knew them in 1777, George Van¬ 
couver described them in 1792. They are elo¬ 
quent with memories of General Vallejo, of 
Larkin and Fremont, of Albert Sydney 
Johnston and other great soldiers—Halleck, 
Thomas, McDowell, Miles and Pershing. 












































































Away from the din of the city. 

From the mart and the bustling street , 
Stands the old church of the Mission, 

With the graveyard at its feet. 

—DANIEL O’CONNELL. 

T HE “bells of the past” tolled when Mo- 
raga, a great San Franciscan, was in¬ 
terred within these sacred walls. In the 
churchyard Gov. Arguello lies, and Leides- 
dorff, and Casey and Cora. Here the infant 
Concepcion de Arguello was baptized, and 
the adult William A. Richardson. Here Lola 
Montez contracted a marriage (probably 
bigamous) with Pat Hull, the handsome edi¬ 
tor of the San Francisco Whig. Here, in 
the days of secularization, Tiburcio Vasquez, 
a relative of the bandit, was major-domo. 

We glimpse “the dying glow of Spanish 
glory,” the padres ministering to a thousand 
Indian neophytes, the Mission pastures cov¬ 
ered with cattle, horses and sheep, and a 
true San Franciscan hospitality extended to 
visitadors, circumnavigators and Yankee 
skippers. 

Our Mission of St. Francis Assisi took its 
popular name from Dolores Creek, so called 


by Padre Font of the Anza Expedition on 
Mar. 29, 1776, feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. 
The padre noted in his diary springs of good 
water, plentiful grass, fennel and other use¬ 
ful herbs, with fragrant manzanita and 
“many wild violets.” Five days before the 
Declaration of Independence the first mass 
was said at an improvised altar. The present 
church, with the Mission buildings that are 
no more, was begun in 1782. 

The earliest of our Mission Indians had 
a game of “odd or even” played with sticks. 
In the Forties and Fifties all sorts of gam¬ 
bling flourished. There were bets on cock 
mains, bull and bear baiting; there were two 
racetracks. And it was a rendezvous for 
duels. Our forefathers came of a Sunday, 
over the planked toll road along Mission st. 
The Mansion House, formerly a Mission 
building, was a favorite place of cheer run 
by Bob Ridley and C. V. Stuart; its milk 
punches were much esteemed. 

But most of all the mind harks back to 
Padre Palou sitting through the long hours 
of the night in his bare Franciscan cell, 
writing the “Noticias” and the life of his 
friend, Serra. All honor to the first of San 
Francisco authors. 






































































































































































If thou wouldst view the Plaza aright. 

Go visit it by the pale moonlight . . . 
When the clock on the Monumental tower 
Tolls to the night the passing hour. 

—BRET HARTE. 

H ERE, in 1833, thrifty Candelario Mira- 
montes of the Presidio cultivated a po¬ 
tato patch. As the only cleared space in the 
midst of sand dunes and chaparral, it be¬ 
came the Plaza of Yerba Buena. Harbormas¬ 
ter Richardson, our first ferryman, and Ja¬ 
cob P. Leese, our first merchant, had dwell¬ 
ings nearby. 

The Custom House rose in 1844, a four- 
room adobe building with tiled roof, at the 
northwest corner of the Plaza. 

July 9, 1846, made history for Yerba 
Buena and for California. Amid cheers and 
a salute of 21 guns, Capt. Montgomery 
landed from the Portsmouth and raised 
the Stars and Stripes on the flagpole in 
front of the Mexican Custom House. 

The town grew around Portsmouth 
Square, “the cradle of San Francisco.” The 
first hotels, the first school, the first circus, 
the first bank, the first Protestant church, 


the first theatrical performances, the best 
restaurants, the best gambling saloons are 
part of the Plaza story. 

The Custom House dropped quickly from 
its high estate—to provide offices for bank¬ 
ers and lawyers! In 1851 Jenkins, the “Syd¬ 
ney Cove,” was hanged from a beam at the 
end of the building by the first Vigilance 
Committee. That same year the fire bell 
rang again as our first Custom House was 
devoured by flames. 

But Portsmouth Square went on accumu¬ 
lating traditions. The bell of old Monumen¬ 
tal in Brenham Place summoned the Vigi¬ 
lantes of ’56 to their grim work. Col. Baker 
spoke here to 30,000 people at the funeral 
of Senator Broderick, who had had a lesser 
audience at this spot when he arraigned 
the Vigilantes of ’51. 

One day there came to the Plaza a 
“princely vagabond” named Robert Louis 
Stevenson. He passed on, but his spirit re¬ 
mains, and any day you may see there tiny 
Americans of Chinatown admiring the “lit¬ 
tle bronze ship” and spelling out the im¬ 
mortal message of the Fountain, “To be 
honest, to be kind.” 





























































































































E. W. SCR1PPS, the founder, said: 

“Give light that the people may find their own way” 


World News events are cov¬ 
ered for The News by an able 
staff of trained economists 
and writers who are special¬ 
ists in international affairs. 



Complete contact with every 
avenue of news in Washing¬ 
ton is made by a large staff 
of skilled reporters and editors 
of our Washington Bureau 
and The United Press. 


The San Francisco News 

"The White Newspaper” 


H 15 0 80 





























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